Amazon Web Services SOA-C02 AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate (SOA-C02) Exam Practice Test

Here are the steps to update an existing AWS CloudFormation stack:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the CloudFormation service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing stack named 1700182 and click on it.

Click on the "Update" button.

Choose "Replace current template" and upload the updated CloudFormation template from the Amazon S3 bucket named "cloudformation-bucket"

In the "Parameter" section, update the EC2 instance type to us-east-t2.nano and add the IP address range 192.168.100.0/30 for SSH access.

Replace the instance profile IAM role with IamRoleB.

In the "Capabilities" section, check the checkbox for "IAM Resources"

Choose the role CFServiceR01e and click on "Update Stack"

Wait for the stack to be updated.

Once the update is complete, navigate to the stack and click on the "Stack options" button, and select "Prevent updates to prevent accidental deletion"

To get the value of the Prodlnstanceld , navigate to the "Outputs" tab in the CloudFormation stack and find the key "Prodlnstanceld". The value corresponding to it is the value that you need to enter in the text box below.

Note:

You can use AWS CloudFormation to update an existing stack.

You can use the AWS CloudFormation service role to deploy updates.

You can refer to the AWS CloudFormation documentation for more information on how to update and manage stacks: https://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/

Here are the steps to configure Amazon EventBridge to meet the above requirements:

Log in to the AWS Management Console by using the AWS Management Console shortcut from the VM desktop. Make sure that you are logged in to the desired AWS account.

Go to the EventBridge service in the us-east-2 Region.

In the EventBridge service, navigate to the "Event buses" page.

Click on the "Create event bus" button.

Give a name to your event bus, and select "default" as the event source type.

Navigate to "Rules" page and create a new rule named "RunFunction"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "Schedule" as the event source and set the schedule to run every 15 minutes.

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to Lambda" and choose the existing AWS Lambda function named "LogEventFunction"

Create another rule named "SpotWarning"

In the "Event pattern" section, select "EC2" as the event source, and filter the events on "EC2 Spot Instance interruption"

In the "Actions" section, select "Send to SNS topic" and create a new standard Amazon SNS topic named "TopicEvents"

In the "Input Transformer" section, set the Input Path to {“instance” : “$.detail.instance-id”} and Input template to “The EC2 Spot Instance has been interrupted on account.

Now all Amazon EC2 events in the default event bus will be replayable for past 90 days.

Note:

You can use the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or SDKs to create and manage EventBridge resources.

You can use CloudTrail event history to replay events from the past 90 days.

You can refer to the AWS EventBridge documentation for more information on how to configure and use the service: https://aws.amazon.com/eventbridge/

Here are the steps to configure an Amazon S3 bucket to serve a static error page in the event of a failure at the primary site:

Log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the S3 service in the us-east-2 Region.

Find the existing S3 bucket named lab-751906329398-26023898.com and click on it.

In the "Properties" tab, click on "Static website hosting" and select "Use this bucket to host a website".

In "Index Document" field, enter the name of the object that you want to use as the index document, in this case, "index.html"

In the "Permissions" tab, click on "Block Public Access", and make sure that "Block all public access" is turned OFF.

Click on "Bucket Policy" and add the following policy to allow public read access:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Sid": "PublicReadGetObject",

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::lab-751906329398-26023898.com/*"

}

]

}

Now navigate to the Amazon Route 53 service, and find the existing hosted zone named lab-751906329398-26023898.com.

Click on the "A record" and update the routing policy to "Primary - Failover" and add the existing ALB as the primary record.

Click on "Create Record" button and create a new secondary failover alias record for the domain lab-751906329398-26023898.com that routes traffic to the existing S3 bucket.

Now, when the primary site (ALB) goes down, traffic will be automatically routed to the S3 bucket serving the static error page.

Note:

You can use CloudWatch to monitor the health of your ALB.

You can use Amazon S3 to host a static website.

You can use Amazon Route 53 for routing traffic to different resources based on health checks.

You can refer to the AWS documentation for more information on how to configure and use these services:

https://aws.amazon.com/s3/

https://aws.amazon.com/route53/

https://aws.amazon.com/cloudwatch/

Graphical user interface, application, Teams Description automatically generated

The most likely reason for being unable to authenticate an AWS CLI call to an AWS service is the absence of an access key. AWS CLI requires an access key and secret key to authenticate requests.

Access Key and Secret Key:

AWS uses access keys to identify and authenticate the identity of the requester.

Ensure that the AWS CLI is configured with a valid access key and secret key.

Check AWS CLI Configuration:

Use the aws configure command to set up the AWS CLI with the necessary credentials.

Verify that the ~/.aws/credentials file contains the correct access key and secret key.

AWS CLI Configuration

Managing Access Keys

The least privilege required for reading encrypted data involves kms:Decrypt to decrypt, kms:DescribeKey to understand key properties, and kms:ListAliases if needed to identify the key alias.

To resolve the issue where mobile users are being served the desktop version of the website, you need to forward the User-Agent header from CloudFront to your origin (ALB). This allows the origin to detect the type of device and serve the appropriate content.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the CloudFront console at Amazon CloudFront Console.

Select the Distribution:

Choose the CloudFront distribution you want to modify.

Update Cache Behavior Settings:

Go to the Behaviors tab.

Select the default behavior (or any specific behavior that you want to update) and choose Edit.

Forward Headers:

Under Cache Key and Origin Requests, choose Origin Request Policy.

Select Create Policy and include the User-Agent header in the policy.

Save the policy and apply it to the cache behavior.

This configuration ensures that the User-Agent header is forwarded to the origin, enabling it to serve different content based on the device type.

Configuring CloudFront to Forward Headers

Creating CloudFront Cache Behaviors

For member accounts in AWS Organizations to receive notifications about estimated costs exceeding a predetermined amount, billing alerts must be enabled in the management/payer account.

Enable Billing Alerts in the Management Account:

Open the AWS Billing and Cost Management console at AWS Billing Console.

In the navigation pane, choose Billing preferences.

Under Billing preferences, ensure that Receive Billing Alerts is enabled.

Create a Budget and Set Up Notifications:

Open the AWS Budgets console at AWS Budgets Console.

Create a budget and configure it to monitor the estimated costs.

Set up notifications for when the budget thresholds are exceeded and specify the email addresses of the managers in the member accounts.

By enabling billing alerts in the management account, you allow member accounts to receive notifications about their estimated costs.

Setting Up Alerts and Notifications

Creating an AWS Budget

To ensure that database credentials are never stored in plaintext and the password is rotated every 30 days, use AWS Secrets Manager:

Store Credentials in Secrets Manager:

Open the AWS Secrets Manager console.

Click on "Store a new secret."

Select "RDS database credentials" and provide the necessary details (username, password, database instance).

Configure the secret's name and details.

Enable Automatic Rotation:

During the secret creation process, enable automatic rotation.

Specify an automatic rotation schedule of 30 days.

Choose the Lambda function that Secrets Manager will use to update the database password automatically.

Update Lambda Functions:

Update each Lambda function to retrieve the database password from Secrets Manager.

Use the AWS SDK in your Lambda code to access Secrets Manager and fetch the secret value.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotating AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

Retrieve Secrets from AWS Lambda

Elastic Load Balancing provides access logs that capture detailed information about requests sent to your load balancer. Each log contains information such as the time the request was received, the client's IP address, latencies, request paths, and server responses. You can use these access logs to analyze traffic patterns and troubleshoot issues.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticloadbalancing/latest/application/load-balancer-access-logs.html

To track instance memory utilization and available disk space using Amazon CloudWatch, the SysOps administrator should install and configure the CloudWatch agent on all instances.

Install and Configure the CloudWatch Agent:

The CloudWatch agent can collect both system-level metrics (e.g., memory utilization, disk space) and application-level metrics and logs.

Install the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance and configure it to collect the necessary metrics.

Attach an IAM Role:

The EC2 instances need permissions to write logs and metrics to CloudWatch.

Attach an IAM role with the necessary permissions (e.g., CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy) to each EC2 instance.

Installing the CloudWatch Agent

Create IAM Roles to Use with the CloudWatch Agent

For high-performance computing (HPC) applications that require minimized network latency and maximized network throughput, the best strategy is to use a cluster placement group. Here’s why:

Cluster Placement Group:

Instances in a cluster placement group are placed within a single Availability Zone, which allows them to communicate using high-bandwidth, low-latency connections.

This is ideal for HPC workloads that require high network throughput and low latency.

For predictable, significant traffic increases during a specific time period every day:

EC2 Auto Scaling Group: Set up an Auto Scaling group for the EC2 instances running the web application. This group automatically adjusts the number of instances based on policies defined.

Scheduled Scaling Policy: Use a scheduled scaling policy to pre-emptively increase the number of instances before the expected increase in traffic each day. Scheduled scaling allows you to specify the scaling actions to occur at specific times, based on known or expected demand patterns.

Attach to ALB: Ensure the Auto Scaling group is attached to the Application Load Balancer, which will distribute incoming traffic across the dynamically adjusted pool of EC2 instances.

This approach ensures that the application scales up resources ahead of the expected load, maintaining performance and user experience without manual intervention.

NAT Gateway resides in public subnet, and traffic should be routed from private subnet to NAT Gateway: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/vpc-nat-gateway.html

Using AWS Systems Manager Distributor and State Manager is an automated and scalable solution for managing software installation across EC2 instances.

Systems Manager Distributor: Allows packaging and distributing the auditing software across multiple Regions.

State Manager Association: Automates software installation on both existing and new instances, ensuring consistent deployment across all managed instances.

Manually connecting to instances or using Lambda is not scalable or efficient for this type of ongoing software management.

Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights allows you to interactively search and analyze your log data. This can be used to quickly identify the top internet destinations accessed by the EC2 instances.

Steps:

Open CloudWatch Logs Insights:

Open the Amazon CloudWatch console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Logs Insights".

Select the Log Group:

Select the log group that contains the VPC flow logs for the NAT gateway.

Run a Query:

Use the following query to identify the top five internet destinations:

sql

Copy code

fields @timestamp, dstAddr

| stats count(*) as requestCount by dstAddr

| sort requestCount desc

| limit 5

This query will count the number of requests to each destination address, sort them in descending order, and limit the results to the top five.

Analyze Results:

Review the output to identify the top five internet destinations that the EC2 instances communicate with for downloads.

To ensure comprehensive and automated security scanning across multiple AWS accounts:

Security Hub Administrator Account: Designate one account within AWS Organizations as the Security Hub administrator account. This centralizes security findings management.

Automate Account Association: Configure Security Hub to automatically associate new accounts in the organization as member accounts. This ensures all new and existing accounts are continuously monitored under the same security policies.

Enable CIS Benchmark Scans: Within Security Hub, enable the CIS AWS Foundations Benchmark standard. This automatically scans all member accounts against this set of security best practices and compliance standards.

This configuration provides an operationally efficient and scalable way to manage security and compliance across an extensive AWS environment, leveraging the native integration of AWS services.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The web application experiences performance degradation during random periods of increased traffic.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a scalable solution to handle varying traffic loads.

Maintain application performance during traffic spikes.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Monitor application latency with CloudWatch alarm and increase instance size.

Manually resizing instances is not efficient for handling random traffic spikes.

Option B: Use EventBridge rule to add EC2 instance to ALB.

This approach is not as efficient as Auto Scaling for dynamic traffic management.

Option C: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with target tracking scaling policy.

Automatically adjusts the number of instances based on traffic demand.

Ensures consistent application performance by scaling in response to traffic changes.

Option D: Deploy to an Auto Scaling group with scheduled scaling policy.

Suitable for predictable traffic patterns but not for random traffic spikes.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: Using an Auto Scaling group with a target tracking scaling policy ensures the application scales dynamically based on traffic, maintaining performance.

Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling

Target Tracking Scaling Policies

Auto Scaling with a target tracking policy provides a robust solution for handling random traffic increases by dynamically adjusting the number of instances.

To route traffic for a subdomain to a CloudFront distribution using Amazon Route 53, you should create an A record with the CloudFront distribution's domain name as the alias target.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select Hosted Zone:

Select the hosted zone for your domain (example.com).

Create Record Set:

Click on Create record.

For Record name, enter static.

Select A - IPv4 address for the record type.

For Alias, choose Yes.

In the Alias Target field, select the CloudFront distribution's domain name from the dropdown menu.

Save Record Set:

Review the settings and click Create records.

This setup directs traffic for static.example.com to the CloudFront distribution, leveraging the distribution's caching and delivery capabilities.

Routing Traffic to a CloudFront Distribution by Using Your Domain Name

Creating Records in Route 53

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/flow-logs-records-examples.html#flow-log-example-accepted-rejected

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/userguide/flow-logs-records-examples.html#

Accepted and rejected traffic: In this example, RDP traffic (destination port 3389, TCP protocol) to network interface eni-1235b8ca123456789 in account 123456789010 was rejected. 2 123456789010 eni-1235b8ca123456789 172.31.9.69 172.31.9.12 49761 3389 6 20 4249 1418530010 1418530070 REJECT OK

To receive an email notification based on a metric threshold, use:

A CloudWatch alarm monitoring FreeStorageCapacity

A CloudWatch alarm action that publishes to an SNS topic

From the CloudWatch Alarm and SNS Documentation:

You can create an alarm on a metric (e.g., FreeStorageCapacity) and configure the alarm action to send a notification to an Amazon SNS topic, which triggers an email notification to all subscribed endpoints.

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Enforce a policy that requires all AWS resources to be tagged according to company policy.

Continuously identify non-compliant resources.

Analyze the Requirements:

Implement a solution to monitor and enforce resource tagging compliance.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: AWS CloudTrail.

Provides logging and monitoring of API calls but does not enforce tagging policies.

Option B: Amazon Inspector.

Primarily used for security assessments, not resource tagging compliance.

Option C: AWS Config.

Monitors and evaluates the configurations of AWS resources.

Can enforce compliance by using AWS Config rules to check resource tags.

Option D: AWS Systems Manager.

Provides operational insights and management but is not specifically designed for compliance enforcement.

Select the Best Solution:

Option C: AWS Config is designed for compliance and configuration monitoring, making it the ideal service for enforcing and identifying non-compliant resource tags.

AWS Config

Managing Resource Tag Compliance with AWS Config

AWS Config provides the necessary tools to enforce and monitor resource tagging compliance, ensuring all resources adhere to the set policy.

The provided IAM policy grants the following permissions:

Describe AWS Load Balancers:

The policy allows actions with the prefix elasticloadbalancing:. This includes actions like DescribeLoadBalancers and other Describe* actions related to Elastic Load Balancing.

AWS provides a native integration with Slack via the AWS Support App, which allows:

Real-time updates for AWS Support cases in Slack

Replying to support cases and adding comments from Slack

Case creation and escalation from Slack

From the AWS Support App in Slack Documentation:

You must first authorize the Slack workspace in your AWS account using the AWS Support App setup process.

Then, add the specific Slack channel by specifying the channel ID and required case types (e.g., account, service limit, technical).

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A: Slack must authorize the workspace first, not just an AWS account.

C and D: Using SNS + EventBridge + Lambda is not necessary, as AWS provides a native Slack integration with full support case features.

When using Amazon Route 53 to manage DNS records for a website hosted behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB), an ALIAS record should be used for the apex domain (e.g., example.com). ALIAS records are designed to map domain names to AWS resources like ALBs, CloudFront distributions, and S3 buckets, providing efficient DNS resolution.

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Route 53 console at Amazon Route 53 Console.

Select Hosted Zone:

Select the hosted zone for your domain.

Create Record Set:

Click on Create record.

In the Record name field, leave it blank to indicate the apex domain.

Select ALIAS as the record type.

Choose the Alias Target to be your Application Load Balancer from the dropdown menu.

Save Record Set:

Review the settings and click Create records.

Choosing Between Alias and Non-Alias Records

Routing Traffic to an ELB Load Balancer

The presigned URL expiration is the most common reason for access issues after some time. Additionally, if the SysOps administrator’s access key (used to generate the presigned URL) is invalid, the URL will no longer be usable. Block Public Access or ACL settings are irrelevant to presigned URLs.

To provision AWS accounts for each team with a defined baseline and governance guardrails in a scalable and efficient way, using AWS Control Tower is the best solution.

AWS Control Tower:

AWS Control Tower provides a straightforward way to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment based on best practices.

It uses Account Factory, a feature that automates the creation of new AWS accounts with predefined configurations.

Creating Accounts with Control Tower:

Navigate to the AWS Control Tower console.

Use Account Factory to create a new account.

Customize the account template to include the necessary configurations, such as organizational units (OUs), guardrails, and baselines.

Advantages:

Ensures consistent security and compliance across all accounts.

Automates account creation and configuration, saving time and reducing errors.

AWS Control Tower

Setting Up Account Factory

To ensure high availability and that instances are placed on distinct underlying hardware, a spread placement group should be used. Spread placement groups place instances on distinct hardware, reducing the risk of simultaneous failures.

Create Spread Placement Group:

Open the EC2 console at Amazon EC2 Console.

Navigate to Placement Groups in the sidebar.

Click Create placement group and select Spread for the strategy.

Launch Instances:

When launching new instances, select the placement group you created.

Ensure the instances are in the same AWS Region but spread across distinct hardware.

Verify Placement:

After launching, verify that the instances are in the spread placement group by checking the instance details in the console.

Placement Groups

Creating a Spread Placement Group

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

The application experiences slower performance during peak activity due to increased load on the Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

Performance issues occur primarily during search operations.

The goal is to improve performance and maximize resource efficiency.

Analyze the Requirements:

The solution should improve the performance of the platform.

It should maximize resource efficiency, which implies cost-effective and scalable options.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Deploy an Amazon ElastiCache for Redis cluster.

ElastiCache for Redis is a managed in-memory caching service that can significantly reduce the load on the database by caching frequently accessed data.

By modifying the application to check the cache before querying the database, repeated searches for the same information will be served from the cache, reducing the number of database reads.

This is efficient and cost-effective as it reduces database load and improves response times.

Option B: Deploy an Aurora Replica and use Auto Scaling.

Adding Aurora Replicas can help distribute read traffic and improve performance.

Aurora Auto Scaling can adjust the number of replicas based on the load.

However, this option may not be as efficient in terms of resource usage compared to caching because it still involves querying the database.

Option C: Use Provisioned IOPS.

Provisioned IOPS can improve performance by providing fast and consistent I/O.

This option focuses on improving the underlying storage performance but doesn't address the inefficiency of handling repeated searches directly.

Option D: Increase the instance size and use Auto Scaling.

Increasing the instance size can provide more resources to handle peak loads.

Aurora Auto Scaling can adjust instance sizes based on the load.

This option can be costly and may not be as efficient as caching in handling repeated searches.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A is the best solution because it leverages caching to reduce the load on the database, which directly addresses the issue of repeated searches causing performance problems. Caching is generally more resource-efficient and cost-effective compared to scaling database instances or storage.

Amazon ElastiCache for Redis Documentation

Amazon Aurora Documentation

AWS Auto Scaling

Using ElastiCache for Redis aligns with best practices for improving application performance by offloading repetitive read queries from the database, leading to faster response times and more efficient resource usage.

geolocation "Geolocation routing lets you choose the resources that serve your traffic based on the geographic location of your users, meaning the location that DNS queries originate from. For example, you might want all queries from Europe to be routed to an ELB load balancer in the Frankfurt region."

Could be confused with geoproximity - "Geoproximity routing lets Amazon Route 53 route traffic to your resources based on the geographic location of your users and your resources. You can also optionally choose to route more traffic or less to a given resource by specifying a value, known as a bias. A bias expands or shrinks the size of the geographic region from which traffic is routed to a resource" the use case is not needed as per question.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/DeveloperGuide/routing-policy.html

To review the VPC configuration of developer AWS accounts securely, the best practice is to use cross-account IAM roles with read-only access.

Create an IAM Policy with Read-Only Access:

Navigate to the IAM console in each developer account.

Create a new policy with read-only access to VPC resources. For example:

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Action": [

"ec2:DescribeVpcs",

"ec2:DescribeSubnets",

"ec2:DescribeRouteTables",

"ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups",

"ec2:DescribeNetworkAcls"

],

"Resource": "*"

}

]

}

Save the policy.

Create a Cross-Account IAM Role:

In the IAM console, choose "Roles" and then "Create role".

Select "Another AWS account" and enter the AWS account ID of the security administrator's account.

Attach the read-only policy created in step 1 to the role.

Save the role and note the role ARN.

Assume the Role from the Security Administrator's Account:

In the security administrator's account, navigate to the IAM console.

Use the "Switch Role" option to assume the cross-account role created in the developer account using the role ARN.

The security administrator can now access the VPC configuration of the developer accounts with read-only permissions.

Cross-Account Access

Creating and Managing IAM Policies

The error message indicates that the current quota for the number of EC2 instances allowed in the specified region has been reached. To resolve this issue, a quota increase must be requested.

Request Quota Increase:

Open the Service Quotas console at Service Quotas Console.

Navigate to Amazon EC2 service.

Find the specific quota for the instance type family that you need to increase.

Select the quota and choose Request quota increase.

Provide the necessary details and submit the request.

This action will initiate a request to AWS to increase the limit, allowing you to launch additional instances once the request is approved.

Service Quotas

Requesting a Quota Increase

This configuration approach will meet the requirement of encrypting all data at rest and rotating the encryption keys once each year. By creating a new AWS KMS customer managed key and enabling automatic key rotation, the encryption keys will be rotated automatically every year. By enabling RDS encryption on the database at creation time using the KMS key, all data stored in the RDS for MySQL Multi-AZ database will be encrypted at rest. This approach provide more control over key management and rotation and provide additional security benefits.

To meet the requirement of consistent performance of 10,000 IOPS with the least cost, the SysOps administrator should use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon EBS volume:

General Purpose SSD (gp3) EBS Volume:

The gp3 volume type can be provisioned with the required IOPS without the need for additional capacity, making it a cost-effective solution compared to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vpc/latest/peering/vpc-peering-routing.html

When establishing a VPC peering connection between two VPCs, you need to update the route tables of both VPCs to allow traffic to flow between them.

Route Table of VPC A (10.0.0.0/16):

Local Route: This route is automatically created to allow traffic within the VPC.

Destination: 10.0.0.0/16, Target: Local

Peering Connection Route: This route directs traffic destined for VPC B (172.31.0.0/16) through the VPC peering connection.

Destination: 172.31.0.0/16, Target: pcx-12345

Route Table of VPC B (172.31.0.0/16):

Local Route: This route is automatically created to allow traffic within the VPC.

Destination: 172.31.0.0/16, Target: Local

Peering Connection Route: This route directs traffic destined for VPC A (10.0.0.0/16) through the VPC peering connection.

Destination: 10.0.0.0/16, Target: pcx-12345

VPC Peering Routing

To rotate an AWS KMS customer master key (CMK) with imported key material every 6 months, follow these steps:

Create a New CMK with New Imported Material:

Generate new key material according to your security policies.

Create a new CMK in AWS KMS and import the new key material into this CMK.

Amazon Route 53's failover routing policy allows you to route traffic to a primary resource unless it is unavailable, in which case Route 53 can fail over to a secondary resource.

Steps:

Open Route 53 Console:

Open the Amazon Route 53 console.

Create Alias Records:

In your hosted zone, create two alias records.

One alias record should point to the ALB in the primary region and the other to the ALB in the secondary region.

Set Failover Routing Policy:

For the alias record pointing to the primary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the primary.

For the alias record pointing to the secondary ALB, set the routing policy to "Failover" and designate it as the secondary.

Enable Health Checks:

Ensure that "Evaluate Target Health" is set to "Yes" for both alias records. This ensures that Route 53 will check the health of the ALBs before routing traffic.

Configure Health Checks for ALBs:

Ensure that each ALB has appropriate health checks configured to accurately report the health of the instances.

To minimize cost while maintaining immediate retrievability for files stored in Amazon S3, you can use S3 Lifecycle policies to transition objects to different storage classes based on their access patterns. Given that files are frequently accessed in the first 30 days and rarely accessed afterward, transitioning to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days is the most cost-effective solution.

Understand S3 Storage Classes:

S3 Standard: Suitable for frequently accessed data.

S3 Standard-Infrequent Access (S3 Standard-IA): Suitable for data that is less frequently accessed but requires rapid access when needed. It offers lower storage costs compared to S3 Standard but has a retrieval fee.

S3 One Zone-Infrequent Access (S3 One Zone-IA): Similar to S3 Standard-IA but stores data in a single Availability Zone, making it less resilient.

S3 Glacier: Suitable for archival storage where data retrieval time is not critical (minutes to hours).

Requirements and Solution:

Access Pattern: Frequent access in the first 30 days, rare access afterward.

Retrievability: Immediate access required for one year.

Cost Efficiency: Minimize storage costs after the first 30 days.

Implementing Lifecycle Policy:

Lifecycle Policy: Configure a lifecycle policy to transition objects to S3 Standard-IA after 30 days.

Step-by-Step Implementation:

Login to AWS Management Console:

Open the Amazon S3 console at Amazon S3 Console.

Navigate to the Bucket:

Select the bucket where the files are stored.

Configure Lifecycle Policy:

Go to the Management tab.

Choose Lifecycle and then + Add lifecycle rule.

Enter a rule name and scope (e.g., apply to all objects in the bucket or specific prefixes).

Under Lifecycle rule actions, choose Transition current versions of objects between storage classes.

Add a transition:

Days after object creation: 30

Storage class: S3 Standard-IA

Optionally, add expiration actions if objects should be deleted after a certain period.

Review and Save:

Review the configuration and save the lifecycle rule.

Amazon S3 Storage Classes

Lifecycle Configuration Elements

Transitioning Objects Using Amazon S3 Lifecycle

To ensure that the Auto Scaling group scales out when CPU utilization rises above 50%, the administrator should configure the Auto Scaling group to dynamically scale based on demand. This is achieved by setting up a scaling policy that triggers based on specific CloudWatch alarms—like CPU utilization exceeding 50%. This dynamic scaling method directly responds to changes in workload, ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently and promptly as demand increases. Option C is the correct answer, aligning with best practices for managing EC2 Auto Scaling based on real-time metrics. Further guidance is available in AWS documentation on dynamic scaling Dynamic Scaling for EC2.

When running CloudWatch Synthetics canaries in a private VPC, they require access to:

CloudWatch API (for canary configuration and control) – via interface endpoint

Amazon S3 (to store canary artifacts and logs) – via gateway endpoint

VPC DNS for name resolution – both DNS resolution and hostnames must be enabled

From CloudWatch Synthetics VPC setup documentation:

If your VPC has no internet access, you must configure VPC endpoints and VPC DNS settings for canaries to run successfully.

To use the static website as a backup to the web application and ensure automated failover, the SysOps administrator should set up failover routing policies in Amazon Route 53.

Failover Routing Policies:

Route 53 failover routing allows you to route traffic to a primary resource when it is healthy and automatically failover to a secondary resource when the primary becomes unhealthy.

Steps to Implement:

Primary Failover Record: Create a primary failover routing policy record and set the value to the ALB. Associate this record with a Route 53 health check that monitors the ALB.

Secondary Failover Record: Create a secondary failover routing policy record and set the value to the static website.

Amazon Route 53 Failover Routing

The most operationally efficient way to capture DHCP log files on 50 of the 100 EC2 instances is to create an additional CloudWatch agent configuration file and use AWS Systems Manager Run Command to update the CloudWatch agent configuration.

Create an Additional CloudWatch Agent Configuration File:

Create a new CloudWatch agent configuration file that includes the settings to capture DHCP log files.

Use AWS Systems Manager Run Command:

AWS Systems Manager Run Command allows you to remotely and securely manage the configuration of your managed instances.

Use the Run Command to restart the CloudWatch agent on each EC2 instance with the append-config option to apply the additional configuration file.

Steps:

Open the Systems Manager console.

Choose "Run Command."

Create a new command document or use an existing one that restarts the CloudWatch agent with the append-config option.

Target the 50 specific EC2 instances.

Amazon CloudWatch Agent Configuration

AWS Systems Manager Run Command

Based on the attached policy, the following actions are allowed for the IAM user:

Allow Amazon RDS DescribeDBInstances Action:

The policy allows rds:Describe* actions on all resources without any condition, so the user can describe RDS instances in any region.

Example action:

rds:DescribeDBInstances

To configure replication of a DynamoDB table to another AWS Region for disaster recovery, you should use DynamoDB Global Tables. Global Tables use DynamoDB Streams to replicate changes across multiple regions.

Enable DynamoDB Streams:

Navigate to the DynamoDB console.

Select your table and enable DynamoDB Streams.

Add a Global Table Region:

With Streams enabled, go to the Global Tables tab.

Add a new region to the table, specifying the region where you want to replicate the data.

Automatic Replication:

DynamoDB will handle the replication of data across regions automatically, ensuring data consistency and high availability.

DynamoDB Global Tables

Enabling DynamoDB Streams

To count application errors grouped by type across all CloudWatch Logs log groups, use CloudWatch Logs Insights.

Steps:

Access CloudWatch Logs Insights:

Open the CloudWatch console and navigate to Logs Insights.

Dedicated Hosts are physical servers that are dedicated to a single customer, ensuring that the customer’s workloads are not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company. This will ensure that the company’s security policy is followed and that sensitive workloads are running on hardware that is not shared with other customers or with other AWS accounts within the company.

The requirement is to implement a failover mechanism that minimizes downtime for an Amazon RDS for MySQL Single-AZ instance that handles read and write traffic.

From the RDS User Guide – Multi-AZ Deployments:

Multi-AZ deployments provide high availability and durability for Database (DB) instances, making them a natural fit for production database workloads.

When you create or modify your DB instance to run as a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone (AZ).

Failover is automatic and requires no manual intervention.

✅ Why A is correct:

Multi-AZ offers automated failover in case of instance failure, with minimal application downtime.

RDS automatically redirects traffic to the standby, which is promoted as the new primary.

❌ Why other options are incorrect:

B. Read replica is for read-only scaling. It does not support writes and is not a failover solution.

C. Auto Scaling Group cannot be applied to RDS instances, which are managed services.

D. RDS Proxy improves connection management, but does not provide failover capability for the RDS instance itself.

To maintain a documented trail of any changes made to the security groups and receive notifications, AWS Config is the best solution.

AWS Config:

AWS Config continuously monitors and records your AWS resource configurations and allows you to automate the evaluation of recorded configurations against desired configurations.

You can set up AWS Config to record changes to your security groups.

Setting Up AWS Config:

Open the AWS Config console and choose "Set up AWS Config."

Select the resource types you want to record (in this case, security groups).

Specify an Amazon S3 bucket to store configuration snapshots and history files.

Notifications:

Create an Amazon SNS topic for notifications about configuration changes.

Subscribe the SysOps administrator's email address to the SNS topic.

AWS Config

Setting Up AWS Config

Applying SCPs to an Organizational Unit:

Service Control Policies (SCPs) allow you to manage permissions for multiple AWS accounts within an organization.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to AWS Organizations.

Create an Organizational Unit (OU) if not already created.

Move the target accounts into the OU.

Create an SCP that denies the use of the specific EC2 instance family.

Attach the SCP to the OU.

This approach ensures that the policy is applied consistently across all accounts in the OU.

AWS Organizations SCPs

To improve RDS performance during peak traffic when resources are over-utilized due to read traffic, the SysOps administrator can take the following actions:

Add a Read Replica:

Amazon RDS Read Replicas provide enhanced performance and durability for database instances.

By creating a read replica, you can offload read traffic from the primary database instance to the replica.

This reduces the load on the primary instance and improves overall performance.

Amazon RDS Read Replicas

Modify the Application to Use Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached:

Amazon ElastiCache is a web service that makes it easy to deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud.

By using ElastiCache for Memcached, you can cache frequently accessed data, reducing the number of read requests to the RDS instance.

This can significantly improve the performance of the database during peak traffic.

Amazon CloudWatch Synthetics:

CloudWatch Synthetics allows you to create canaries to monitor your endpoints and API calls, simulating user behavior to detect issues before users do.

Steps:

Go to the AWS Management Console.

Navigate to CloudWatch and select "Synthetics."

Click on "Create canary."

Choose "Heartbeat monitoring" as the blueprint.

Configure the canary to point to the FQDN of the website.

Set the frequency and retention settings as per your requirement.

Create the canary.

This setup continuously checks the operational status of your website, alerting you if it becomes unreachable or has issues.

AWS CloudWatch Synthetics

To ensure that all users within the AWS Organization have read-level access to a specific Amazon S3 bucket, while preventing access outside the organization, you can specify a wildcard principal ("Principal": "*") and use the PrincipalOrgId condition key in the bucket policy.

Specify the Principal:

Use "Principal": "*". This means that any principal can access the bucket, but the actual access will be controlled by the condition.

Add Condition with PrincipalOrgId:

Add a condition to restrict access based on the PrincipalOrgId. This condition ensures that only the principals from the specified AWS Organization can access the bucket.

Example bucket policy:

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": "*",

"Action": "s3:GetObject",

"Resource": "arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*",

"Condition": {

"StringEquals": {

"aws:PrincipalOrgID": "o-exampleorgid"

}

}

}

]

}

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the functionality of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and regions with a single operation. Using a stack set, the SysOps administrator can manage deployments across different regions and accounts within AWS Organizations efficiently.

Setting up StackSets: First, define your CloudFormation template that describes all the resources that need to be deployed across the regions. Store this template in an S3 bucket accessible by the central administration account.

Service-Managed Permissions: When creating a stack set, select the option for service-managed permissions if you are using AWS Organizations. This allows AWS CloudFormation to automatically set up the necessary permissions in the target accounts.

Deploying the Stack Set: From the central administration account, create the stack set and specify the target accounts and regions. CloudFormation will then ensure that the resources defined in the template are instantiated in each of the specified regions and accounts.

This method simplifies management and ensures consistency of infrastructure across multiple regions and accounts, leveraging the organizational units in AWS Organizations for centralized governance.

The requirement to share the same underlying files among EC2 instances with data consistency is best met by using Amazon Elastic File System (EFS), which supports concurrent access from multiple EC2 instances. A new launch template version should include user data scripts that mount the EFS file system on each instance launched by the Auto Scaling group. Older instances can be cycled out to ensure all instances use the new configuration. Option A is correct and provides the necessary solution while ensuring data consistency and availability. For implementation guidance, refer to the AWS documentation on integrating EFS with EC2 Amazon EFS Integration with EC2.

AWS Systems Manager Run Command provides an efficient method to execute administrative tasks on EC2 instances. This solution will minimize the time and complexity involved:

Select Document: Choose AWS-RunShellScript for Linux-based instances or AWS-RunPowerShellScript for Windows-based instances.

Configure Command: Enter the mitigation script provided by the security team into the command document.

Target Instances: Use the tagging system to target only the instances that match the specific OS as identified by their tags.

Execute Command: Run the command across the targeted instances.

Verification and Reporting: The command history in Systems Manager will serve as evidence of execution and success, which can be reported back to the security team.

AWS Documentation Reference:

More about Run Command can be found here: AWS Systems Manager Run Command.

AWS CloudWatch cross-account observability allows a central monitoring account to access logs, metrics, and traces from source accounts.

From the Amazon CloudWatch cross-account observability setup guide:

To set up a new source account, you must:

Deploy the CloudFormation template provided by AWS in the source account to configure resource sharing and access.→ ✅ C

Add the new source account ID to the monitoring account configuration so the monitoring account knows which accounts to observe.→ ✅ E

In the source account, configure what data types (logs, metrics, traces) will be shared with the monitoring account.→ ✅ F

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A/B: You do not download the template from the accounts themselves. AWS provides a template, or your organization reuses an existing one.

D: The template must be deployed in the source account, not the monitoring account.

To allow the TTL (Time to Live) of individual pages to vary while adhering to the maximum and minimum TTL settings configured for the Amazon CloudFront distribution, setting cache behaviors directly at the origin is most effective:

Use Cache-Control Headers: By configuring the Cache-Control: max-age directive in the HTTP headers of the objects served from the origin, you can specify how long an object should be cached by CloudFront before it is considered stale.

Integration with CloudFront: When CloudFront receives a request for an object, it checks the cache-control header to determine the TTL for that specific object. This allows individual objects to have their own TTL settings, as long as they are within the globally set minimum and maximum TTL values for the distribution.

Operational Efficiency: This method does not require any additional AWS services or modifications to the distribution settings. It leverages HTTP standard practices, ensuring compatibility and ease of management.

Implementing the TTL management through cache-control headers at the origin provides precise control over caching behavior, aligning with varying content freshness requirements without complex configurations.

Because the instance is:

In an isolated subnet (no internet or VPN access)

And you're not using Systems Manager

The best option is to use EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint, which allows SSH access to EC2 instances in private subnets without NAT or VPN.

From EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint documentation:

EC2 Instance Connect Endpoint enables secure connectivity to EC2 instances in private subnets without needing a public IP, bastion host, or VPN.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ri-convertible-exchange.html

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECS/latest/developerguide/task-networking-awsvpc.html

To monitor traffic flows between ECS tasks, you need to use VPC Flow Logs and specify the awsvpc network mode in the task definition.

VPC Flow Logs:

VPC Flow Logs capture information about the IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC.

Enable VPC Flow Logs on the elastic network interfaces (ENIs) used by the ECS tasks.

awsvpc Network Mode:

The awsvpc network mode gives each task its own ENI, allowing for more granular network monitoring and security controls.

This mode is required to capture detailed traffic flow information for each ECS task.

VPC Flow Logs

Amazon ECS Task Networking

If an EC2 instance does not appear in the Systems Manager Session Manager list, it is likely because the instance does not have an attached IAM role that allows Session Manager to connect.

Attach IAM Role with Necessary Permissions:

Ensure the EC2 instance has an IAM role attached with the AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy.

Steps to Attach IAM Role:

Open the EC2 console, select the instance, and choose "Actions" -> "Instance Settings" -> "Attach/Replace IAM Role."

Select or create an IAM role with the necessary permissions for Session Manager.

Permissions for Session Manager:

The AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore policy provides the required permissions for the Systems Manager agent to interact with the Systems Manager service.

Session Manager Prerequisites

Attach an IAM Role to an Instance

To allow access using current LDAP credentials while migrating to AWS, the best approach is to federate the LDAP directory with IAM using SAML.

Set Up SAML-Based Federation:

AWS supports identity federation using SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) 2.0. You need to configure your LDAP directory to federate with AWS IAM via SAML.

Technology to use is a VPC endpoint - "A VPC endpoint enables private connections between your VPC and supported AWS services and VPC endpoint services powered by AWS PrivateLink. AWS PrivateLink is a technology that enables you to privately access services by using private IP addresses. Traffic between your VPC and the other service does not leave the Amazon network." S3 is an example of a gateway endpoint. We want to see services in AWS while not leaving the VPC.

To meet the requirement of consistent performance of 10,000 IOPS with the least cost, the SysOps administrator should use a General Purpose SSD (gp3) Amazon EBS volume:

General Purpose SSD (gp3) EBS Volume:

The gp3 volume type can be provisioned with the required IOPS without the need for additional capacity, making it a cost-effective solution compared to Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) volumes.

Ensuring that all the EC2 instances have an instance profile with Systems Manager access is the most effective way to fix this issue. Having an instance profile with Systems Manager access will allow the SysOps administrator to configure the inventory collection for all the instances in the subnet, regardless of whether or not they are managed by Systems Manager.

Evictions in Redis occur when memory is full and new data overwrites older data. To reduce evictions and retain more data:

Increase node size (memory capacity) or

Add more nodes (sharding)

From ElastiCache Redis eviction documentation:

High eviction count suggests memory pressure. To reduce evictions, consider increasing node size.

To identify changes made by the compromised access key, the SysOps administrator should search the AWS CloudTrail event history:

AWS CloudTrail:

CloudTrail logs all API calls made in an AWS account, which includes events initiated by access keys. This makes it the ideal service to investigate changes made using the compromised access key.

To transition the Amazon Elasticsearch Service (Amazon ES) domain to a highly available, production-grade deployment:

Cluster Configuration:

Use a cluster of six data nodes to handle data ingestion and querying.

Distribute these nodes across three Availability Zones (AZs) for high availability and fault tolerance.

To securely connect to the S3 buckets over a private connection from EC2 instances without incurring additional costs, the SysOps administrator can create a gateway VPC endpoint.

Create a Gateway VPC Endpoint:

Navigate to the VPC console.

Create a gateway VPC endpoint for Amazon S3.

AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends the capability of stacks by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and AWS Regions

If a Lambda function is not being invoked by an Amazon EventBridge (formerly CloudWatch Events) rule, the likely issue is a missing permission. The Lambda function needs permission to be invoked by the EventBridge rule.

Steps:

Add Permission to Lambda Function:

Open the AWS Lambda console.

Select your Lambda function.

Choose "Configuration" and then "Permissions".

Under the "Resource-based policy" section, add a policy that grants EventBridge permission to invoke your function.

Example policy:

json

Copy code

{

"Version": "2012-10-17",

"Statement": [

{

"Effect": "Allow",

"Principal": {

"Service": "events.amazonaws.com"

},

"Action": "lambda:InvokeFunction",

"Resource": "arn:aws:lambda:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:function:FUNCTION_NAME",

"Condition": {

"ArnLike": {

"AWS:SourceArn": "arn:aws:events:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:rule/RULE_NAME"

}

}

}

]

}

Verify the EventBridge Rule:

Open the Amazon EventBridge console.

Select the rule that targets your Lambda function.

Ensure that the rule is correctly configured to match events and the target is your Lambda function.

C: Ensures logs are ingested into CloudWatch from EC2 via the CloudWatch agent.

E: Allows creation of metric filters and alarms based on log patterns (e.g., "rejected web requests").

From CloudWatch Logs & Alarms documentation:

You can extract metric data from log events using metric filters and then create CloudWatch alarms based on these filters.

This is the most efficient and least operational overhead solution.

DependsOn Attribute in CloudFormation:

The DependsOn attribute in AWS CloudFormation ensures that one resource is created only after another resource has been successfully created. In this case, it ensures that the EC2 instance is fully launched before the custom resource (the Lambda function) is executed.

Steps:

Update the CloudFormation template to include the DependsOn attribute for the custom resource.

Ensure that the custom resource references the EC2 instance.

Resources:

MyEC2Instance:

Type: AWS::EC2::Instance

Properties:

# EC2 properties

MyCustomResource:

Type: Custom::MyCustomResource

DependsOn: MyEC2Instance

Properties:

ServiceToken: !GetAtt MyLambdaFunction.Arn

# Other properties

AWS CloudFormation DependsOn Attribute

When setting up an AWS managed VPN connection and creating a customer gateway resource, if the customer gateway device resides behind a NAT device, you should use the public IP address of the NAT device. This is because the VPN connection from AWS will be established to the public IP address that AWS can reach.

Identify the Public IP Address of the NAT Device:

Determine the public IP address assigned to the NAT device in front of the customer gateway.

Create Customer Gateway Resource:

Navigate to the VPC console in the AWS Management Console.

In the navigation pane, choose "Customer Gateways" and then click "Create Customer Gateway".

Enter a name for the customer gateway.

For the "IP Address", enter the public IP address of the NAT device.

Configure VPN Connection:

Create a VPN connection by navigating to the "VPN Connections" section and clicking "Create VPN Connection".

Select the created customer gateway and complete the VPN setup wizard.

Update Routing and Configuration:

Ensure that the routing configurations on both the AWS side and the on-premises side are updated to route traffic through the VPN connection.

Configure the customer gateway device (behind the NAT) to accept traffic from the NAT device and route it appropriately.

AWS Managed VPN Connections

Customer Gateway Resource

Step-by-Step Explanation:

Understand the Problem:

Manage a database password securely and rotate it every 90 days.

Analyze the Requirements:

Ensure secure management and automatic rotation of the database password.

Minimize manual intervention and risk of exposing the password.

Evaluate the Options:

Option A: Use the AWS SecretsManager Secret resource with the GenerateSecretString property.

Secrets Manager can automatically generate a strong password.

The RotationSchedule resource defines a rotation schedule to rotate the password every 90 days.

Option B: Use the AWS SecretsManager Secret resource with the SecretString property.

Requires accepting a password as a CloudFormation parameter and does not automate password generation.

Option C: Use the AWS SSM Parameter resource.

AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store can store secure strings, but it does not support automatic rotation.

Option D: Use the AWS SSM Parameter resource without secure string.

This option does not offer the security of Secrets Manager and does not support automatic rotation.

Select the Best Solution:

Option A: Using AWS Secrets Manager with the GenerateSecretString property and RotationSchedule resource ensures secure management and automatic rotation of the database password.

AWS Secrets Manager

Rotate AWS Secrets Manager Secrets

AWS Secrets Manager provides secure storage, automatic rotation, and seamless integration with applications for accessing secrets.

When working with AWS CloudFormation, understanding how the stack behaves during a failure is crucial for troubleshooting. By default, if a stack creation fails, CloudFormation will roll back any resources it created, leaving no trace of what went wrong. This default behavior makes debugging more difficult because the resources that may have caused the failure are deleted.

To change this behavior, AWS CloudFormation provides the --on-failure parameter when creating a stack using the AWS CLI or SDKs. The purpose of this parameter is to control what happens if stack creation fails.

From the AWS CloudFormation User Guide:

--on-failure

Required: No

Type: String

Valid values: DO_NOTHING | ROLLBACK | DELETE

Default: ROLLBACK

DO_NOTHING – If stack creation fails, do nothing. The stack remains in the CREATE_FAILED state. You can then investigate and take corrective action.

ROLLBACK – If stack creation fails, roll back all created resources.

DELETE – If stack creation fails, delete all created resources (i.e., behave as if the stack was never attempted).

✅ Why B is correct:

OnFailure=DO_NOTHING tells CloudFormation to retain all successfully created resources even if stack creation fails. This allows a SysOps administrator to inspect the created resources, review logs, or fix the template before attempting to resume or recreate the stack.

❌ Why the other options are incorrect:

A. DisableRollback = FalseThis is default behavior, meaning rollback will occur (i.e., resources will be deleted). This does not help preserve resources after failure.

C. Rollback trigger of DO_NOTHINGThere is no such rollback trigger value called DO_NOTHING. Rollback triggers are for monitoring CloudWatch alarms during stack updates or creations and do not influence what happens when a creation fails unless a trigger fires.

D. OnFailure = ROLLBACKThis is the default, and it removes all resources when the stack creation fails, which is the opposite of the requirement.

Conclusion:

To preserve resources that were successfully created during a failed CloudFormation stack creation, the correct and verified approach is:

Set OnFailure=DO_NOTHING during stack creation.

This enables post-mortem debugging by retaining the resources for inspection.

ElastiCache for Redis offers Global Datastore, which:

Enables low-latency read access in multiple AWS Regions.

Allows read/write in the primary Region, and read-only in secondaries.

Provides data consistency across Regions, which meets the use case.

From ElastiCache Redis Global Datastore documentation:

Global Datastore replicates data between Regions using asynchronous replication. Supports cross-region read scalability.

Using AWS CloudFormation stack sets allows you to manage CloudWatch alarms across multiple accounts efficiently:

Create Stack Set: Use a CloudFormation template that defines the required CloudWatch alarms and configures them to publish alerts to an SNS topic.

Specify SNS Topic: Ensure the SNS topic is located in the logging account and has the necessary permissions set to receive publications from all accounts in the organization.

Deploy Across Organization: Implement the stack set across all accounts, ensuring centralized management and standardized deployment.

AWS Documentation Reference:

Learn more about deploying resources with CloudFormation StackSets: Working with AWS CloudFormation StackSets.

To configure Route 53 for high availability with failover between a primary and a secondary server, the following steps should be taken:

Create Health Checks:

Create HTTP health checks for both the primary and secondary servers. Ensure these health checks are configured to look for HTTP 2xx or 3xx status codes.

The reason is that it uses the Amazon CloudWatch billing alarm which is a built-in service specifically designed to monitor and alert on cost usage of your AWS account, which makes it a more suitable solution for this use case. The alarm can be configured to detect when costs reach 75% of the threshold and when it is triggered, it can publish a message to an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic. The email distribution list can be subscribed to the topic, so that they will receive the alerts when costs reach 75% of the threshold.

AWS Budgets allows you to track and manage your costs, but it doesn't specifically focus on data transfer costs between regions, and it might not provide as much granularity as CloudWatch Alarms.